Shadow of Freedom

So whatever else is going on, this fellow at least thinks he’s telling us the truth, she thought. Which is all just as mysterious as hell, isn’t it, Mike? Oh, the joys of senior flag rank!

“No, I haven’t been briefed,” she said calmly, tipping her chair back and resting her elbows on its arms so she could steeple her fingers under her chin. “If you’d care to tell me what’s going on, though, I’m more than willing to listen. Whether I’ll be prepared to believe you, or to act on whatever you have to say, is another matter, of course. So, on that basis, is there something you’d care to tell me about?”

* * *

“I’m sorry, Milady, but that’s got to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of,” Aploloniá Munming said some hours later. Then she seemed to realize what she’d just said and shook her head. “Scratch that. We’ve been hearing some pretty damned ridiculous things generally over the last few months, and it seems an appalling number of them are more accurate than we’d like. So let’s just say I find this Ankenbrandt’s story a bit difficult to accept.”

“I’d put it a bit more strongly than that, myself, Admiral Gold Peak,” Rear Admiral Mickaël Ruddock said.

The red-haired, blue-eyed Ruddock commanded the second division of Munming’s superdreadnought squadron, and he was even more bluntly spoken (if possible) then Munming, Michelle reflected. That could be because he was on the smallish side and felt a little defensive about his lack of centimeters. Or, even more likely, it could be because he was a Gryphon highlander…and on the smallish side.

“I’d be inclined t’ go along with Admiral Munming and Admiral Ruddock,” Michael Oversteegen mused out loud, “if Alfredo and Master Sergeant Cognasso hadn’t vouched for him.”

“I thought the same thing,” Michelle admitted, sipping from the steaming mug of coffee Billingsley had deposited on the briefing room table at her elbow. “But Alfredo does vouch for him. Whatever else he may have been doing, he wasn’t lying. And Alfredo also confirms that his anxiety over what’s going on in Mobius is genuine.” She shrugged. “However bizarre it sounds, Ankenbrandt really is playing messenger for a bunch of people who’ve been—or who think they’ve been, anyway—in contact with and receiving clandestine support from the Star Empire.”

“Forgive me, Ma’am,” Cynthia Lecter said, “but that’s crazy. I mean, from the timetable he’s described, they’ve been in contact with us since before Commodore Terekhov even sailed for Monica.” She nodded respectfully in Terekhov’s direction without ever looking away from Michelle. “We had absolutely no interest in this region at that point. Why in God’s name would we have been making clandestine contacts with a resistance movement directed at Frontier Security?”

“Now, now, Cindy,” Michelle corrected, waving an index finger gently. “It’s not a resistance movement against OFS. It’s a resistance movement against this President Lombroso. He’s just an OFS lackey, not the real thing, like they have in Madras.”

“That doesn’t change my point, Ma’am,” Lecter replied with a certain respectful asperity. “It would still have been an incredibly foolish, risky, ultimately pointless thing for us to have done. And if we had been doing anything of the sort, and if Baroness Medusa really knew about it, do you think she would’ve sent us out here without at least mentioning it to you?”

“No, Cindy, I don’t,” Michelle said calmly. “That doesn’t mean they haven’t been in contact with somebody, though. And it doesn’t mean they don’t believe it’s Manticore they’ve been talking to.”

“But…what would be the point?” Lecter asked almost plaintively.

“Aivars?” Michelle invited, looking at the tall, blond commodore.

“The same points you’re raising occurred to me when I first heard Ankenbrandt’s story, Captain Lecter,” Terekhov said, looking down the table at Michelle’s chief of staff. “In fact, I was inclined—especially in the absence of a treecat lie detector of my own—to write him off as either a complete crackpot or a Frontier Security plant trying to suck us into a misstep. Frankly, I’m still not completely ready to dismiss the second possibility. Even if he believes he’s telling us the truth, he and all of his friends in Mobius could’ve been set up by OFS for that very purpose. On the other hand, as you pointed out yourself, there’s the timetable. I can’t see why Frontier Security would have been worrying about setting anything like this up before we ever crossed swords with Monica.